A Conservative election candidate has told how online trolls tried to destroy his photography business by posting fake reviews.
Angus Forbes, who failed to oust the SNP’s Pete Wishart from his seat in Perth and North Perthshire, said he was unprepared for the level of abuse he received during his campaign.
The Perth and Kinross councillor said he woke every morning with a “sense of dread” over what was waiting for him in his email inbox or on social media.
Mr Forbes said: “Whilst I expected some abuse as a candidate, I was entirely unprepared for the volume of it and the viciousness it contained.
“The most disturbing was the people who tied to ruin my small photography business by leaving fake reviews.
“One young man commented: ‘Don’t use this guy, he is selling my NHS’.
“Another simply gave a one-star review with the word ‘avoid’.”
Mr Forbes shut down the review option on his business’s Facebook page, and asked Google to remove messages.
“I feel like I am on first name terms with the review team at Google,” he said.
Mr Forbes also said his election leaflets were posted back to his office in Scone, with insults scrawled on them.
“Why someone would take the time to do that and then pay for a stamp, take it to the post box and post it is beyond me,” he said.
“Surely the anger would subside by the time you had sealed the envelope?”
Mr Forbes, who was criticised for speaking about a foodbank near his Spanish holiday home at a Perth husting, said he received less abuse going door-to-door.
“I constantly felt under pressure,” he said.
“It’s well within the capacity of these people simply to make up lies and the modus operandi is to destroy the individual rather than the policy.
“This left me wondering every day what would come next. We need to get rid of this type of politics in Scotland, the country is divided enough. We will never succeed as a nation while this is going on.”
